Liquor and drinks
28 October 2020
Homemade pumpkin beer
Category:
Liquor and drinks
Difficulty:
Medium
Servings:
4
Pumpkin beer has its origins in colonial America, where colonists, lacking raw materials for brewing, began using the readily available pumpkin. Today, pumpkin beer has gained popularity thanks to home and craft breweries. This beer is perfect for the autumn season and is made with various additions, e.g., cinnamon, ginger, and cloves or nutmeg. Brewing such a beer is a good idea for Halloween; instead of throwing away the pieces carved from your pumpkin, it’s worth putting them to good use.
Notes
Recipe for homemade pumpkin beer
Preparation:
Important: Thoroughly wash the equipment used to prepare the beer and rinse it in a potassium metabisulfite solution.
Part I
Remove the yeast from under the lid of the Coopers Real Ale concentrate. Place the closed can in a vessel with hot water for 10 minutes. (If you are using a can of malt extract, place it in the hot water as well).
Into a 4–5 L pot, pour 2 L of hot water, add the contents of the can with the concentrate and the can with the malt extract, or add 1 kg of glucose or sugar. Mix thoroughly.
Pour 20 L of lukewarm water into the fermentation vessel (bucket or carboy). Top up with the cooled wort (water + contents of the cans). Mix everything thoroughly.
When the temperature of the solution is between 21–27°C, sprinkle in the sachet of brewing yeast and mix again for about 30 s.
Close the carboy or fermenter and fit an airlock half-filled with water. Leave for 3–4 days of fermentation.
Part II
Cut the pumpkin into slices, sprinkle with 2 teaspoons of spice, and bake on parchment in the oven at 180°C for 45 minutes.
After this time, let the pumpkin cool, peel off the skin, and blend the flesh. In this way you should obtain about 200–300 g of pumpkin purée.
Add the purée to the beer, gently stir, and continue fermentation for about 2–3 days.
The entire fermentation process will take about 7–10 days, until it reaches 0–2 °Blg.
Once fermentation is complete, transfer the beer to bottles.
Add 4 g of sugar to each 0.5 L bottle.
Enjoy! ...because homemade is better!
